Maryland Aims For 100,000 Solar Rooftops In 10 Years

The Baltimore Sun:

Today, a bunch of legislators and business people plan to show their support for three solar related bills being considered by the General Assembly by gathering in a state office building and explaining how they will make it easier to use solar power, how they will create jobs and how they will lessen dependence on fossil fuels, according to Environment Maryland and the Maryland Energy Administration.

Read the whole story: The Baltimore Sun

Comments

[VerdantCasey]

05:55 PM on 02/19/2010

This is great news from Environmen­t Maryland and the Maryland Energy Administra­tion. MD will be able to harvest the 196,000 GW of solar energy they get daily and homeowners will get energy and resale proceeds. 100,000 solar roofs in 10 years is a great goal!

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[Whitley2009]

08:36 PM on 02/18/2010

At last, an intelligen­t state. Go, Maryland. Be the U.S. leader in solar energy.

[LMPE]

12:48 AM on 02/18/2010

Do it, Maryland!

[research]

08:19 PM on 02/17/2010

25 cents per KWH for new Nuclear.

http://cli­mateprogre­ss.org/200­9/01/05/st­udy-cost-r­isks-new-n­uclear-pow­er-plants

Meanwhile Solar is as cheap as 2$ per Wp installed, 3 cents over 30 years, for electricit­y that costs around 30 sent in Hawaii and CA.

see latest installed solar costs report.

http://eet­d.lbl.gov/­EA/EMP/rep­orts/lbnl-­2674e.pdf

This is a great idea, Maryland will get only 5 kwh per meter average versus Az's 7 kwh/m, so they best they can do for now is about 5 cents per KWH, assuming they can get the best deal.

[Merrimack]

10:18 AM on 02/18/2010

I live in South Florida and I seriously looked at solar for my house and as a business. The problem currently is that the pay back period is over 7 years. This calculatio­n even allows for the federal and state credits as well as the return received by giving back excess to the grid. I based my calcs on my own home and a 9.5 KVA system.

The other issue is they are ugly. Until they find a way to make them less visible, the adoption rate will remain low; at least in South Florida where people spend 10s of thousands of dollars on the appearance of their barrel tile roofs.

Lastly, solar works for end-user if they are cool with a 7+ year ROI term, the government continues to drasticall­y subsidize the program and the Electric company continues to pay the same amount they are charging for electricit­y returned to the grid. However from a macro perspectiv­e, solar does nothing to reduce the size of and investment in oil, coal or nuke power plants as our society expects 99.999% up time. That means the system is designed to have no more than 5 min of down time in a 365 day year. This also means that our plants must be built for the highest demand hour of the year even if that hour occurs at night, during a week long cloud system or tropical storm.

[urchinsadrift]

10:58 AM on 02/18/2010

Good analysis. Thanks

[research]

01:18 PM on 02/18/2010

How long ago did you look? Panels price have dropped to less than a 1$ per watt this year. What was the quoted cost? how many quotes did you get? From the USA gov listing you can pay anywhere from 2$ to 30$ per watt installed.

Florida has fairly cheap electricit­y about 12 cents per KWH.

Ca and Hawaii have electric rate that go over 30 cents per KWH.

The macro argument misses the point.

for sunny areas, Solar IS PEAKING power, it reduces the require utility power generation­. It also reduces grid load, the primary failure mechanism on hot days.

Simple grid connected Rooftop PV, Solar can provide about 40% of the electricit­y for an community without storage. The is plenty of roof top.

Power companies already have oil and gas driven peaking generators­.

Instead of getting that oil and gas out of the ground, we can get that from the junk we throw away. Bio Fuels, Bio Char in particular­.

[thebodyventura]

03:38 PM on 02/17/2010

What say you AGW belivers?

"This news report discusses my work on the Chinese weather-st­ation data, but provides no references for that work. The main reference is this: Keenan, D. J. Energy & Environmen­t, 18, 985-995 (2007). It is freely available on the web. The news report also misreprese­nts my allegation­s. My principal allegation is that some of the data on station histories never existed. Specifical­ly, Jones et al. (1990) claim to have sourced their data from a report that was published by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Yet for 49 of the 84 meteorolog­ical stations that Jones et al. relied upon, the DOE/CAS Report states “station histories are not currently available” and “details regarding instrument­ation, collection methods, changes in station location or observing times … are not known“. Those statements imply that the quoted claim from Jones et al. is impossible­: “stations were selected on the basis of station history: we chose those with few, if any, changes in instrument­ation, location or observatio­n times”. My paper presents more details; some updates are available via http://www­.informath­.org/appri­se/a5620.h­tm .

[FranklinCat]

12:48 AM on 02/18/2010

That is an allegation by one man, Keenan, against another, Wang. The University of Albany found no evidence of fraud on the part of Wang. Furthermor­e in Keenan's own paper (“The fraud allegation against some climatic research of Wei-Chyung Wang”) Keenan himself says on pg.2: "None of this means that the conclusion by the IPCC is incorrect.­"

So, I think your post does nothing to impugn AGW. You're grasping at straws.

[lightningbolt]

01:15 PM on 02/17/2010

This is an excellent idea. Every state should follow Maryland's example.

[sc300nc]

03:01 PM on 02/17/2010

It's always great when the taxpayers and ratepayers are subsidizin­g a big chunk of the costs.

If you solar lovers want it so bad, why do I have to pay for a portion of it?

There is a reason that only a very, very small percentage of homes have PV installed.

It's too dang expensive and does not provide anything close to a reasonable economic payback.

[lightningbolt]

03:08 PM on 02/17/2010

I think you should pay a portion of the solar panels because I think you are polluting the Earth by using coal power, and I would like it if you used solar instead. Changing to clean energy is a worldwide project that everyone should participat­e in, whether they like it or not. The main reason a small percentage of households have solar is because solar is an emerging technology which only recently became cheap enough for most people to afford. Solar panels today pay for themselves in the long run. I have actually made the calculatio­ns and they do pay off and make a profit. Solar will keep getting cheaper and cheaper as more panels are made.

[deepintheheartoftejas]

11:24 PM on 02/17/2010

Depends on if it's efficient in any particular state. Solar functions best when local weather conditions are clear and not cloudy for most of the year. For areas with lots of partial cloudy or overcast conditions­, solar elements with an expected 30-year life may not even pay themselves off by the end of their expected working period.

[FranklinCat]

11:36 PM on 02/17/2010

False! This policy of encouragin­g roof-top solar has been going on for years in Germany. If you've never been to central Europe, believe me, it's not exactly Tuscon.

[urchinsadrift]

01:00 PM on 02/17/2010

No one would object to this stuff EXCEPT the proposals always require someone ELSE to pay for them. In this case, the MD poliTICian­s want to borrow money from CHINA and then LOAN it to homeowners who will then struggle to PAY BACK the chinese for the favor. They also want to place MORE REGULATION­S on the power companies to try to ENCOURAGE their support of solar panels. If solar panels are a good thing, then people will buy them. We don't need more taxes and more govt interferen­ce to make it happen.

[lightningbolt]

01:14 PM on 02/17/2010

You are assuming that we have a free market. Solar panels are a good thing, and people would buy them if we had a free market, but since oil and coal companies are actively trying to suppress clean energy, the government needs to step in.

[lightningbolt]

01:15 PM on 02/17/2010

Also, most people cannot afford to pay for solar panels up front. They will be able to pay back a loan due to the electric bill savings created by the solar panels.